THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
For the historical side of the medical practise consult: E. Vignat, Les Lepreux et les chevaliers de S. Lazare de Jerusalem, Orleans, 1884; R. Hery, Les Leproseries dans Vancienne France, Paris, 1896; E. Neret, La Prophylaxie de la lepre au moyen-dge, ib. 1896; L. Le Grand, Les Maisons-Dieu et leproseries de Paris, 14. siecle, Paris,
1898; E. Ehlers, Danish Lazar Houses in the Middle Ages, London, 1901.
LE QUIEN, le ki"an', MICHEL: French Dominican; b. at Boulogne Oct. 8, 1661; d. at Paris Mar. 12, 1733. He became a Dominican at the age of twenty, and throughout the long period of his literary activity was librarian of the monastery of his order in the Rue St. Honore, Paris. His principal polemical works, which are of minor interest, are Defense du texte hebreu et de la version vulgate (Paris, 1690); Stephani de Altimura panoplia contra schisma Grcecum (1718), a defense of the papal claims to supremacy against Nectarius, patriarch of Jerusalem; La Nullite des ordinations anglicanes (2 vols., 1725); and La Nullite des ordinations anglicanes demontrce de nouveau (2 vols., 1730). Far more important was his edition of John of Damascus in Greek and Latin (2 vols., Paris, 1712; reprinted, with additions, MPG, xciv.-xcvi.); and, above all, his Oriens Christianus in quatuor patriarchatus digestus (3 vols., Paris, 1740), modeled on D. de Sainte-Marthe's Gallia Christiana, and treating in the first volume of Pont us, Asia, and Thrace as dioceses of the patriarchate of Constantinople, in the second of Illyricum (as the fourth Constantinopolitan diocese) and the patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch, and in the third of the dioceses of the Chaldean and Jacobite Churches. (O. ZocKLERf.)
Bibliography: J. Quetif and J. Echard, Scriptores ordinis prcedicatorum, ii. 808-809, Paris, 1721; H. Hurter, Nomenclator literarius, ii. 1064-66, Innsbruck, 1893; KL, vii. 1827-28.
LERINS, le"ran (LERINUM), MONASTERY OF:
An old monastery on the island of Saint-Honorat (one of the Lerins group) , off the coast of southern France, opposite Cannes, founded by St. Honoratus about 400. Honoratus was of Gallo-Roman origin and appears to have belonged to an aristocratic family. In early youth he began a monastic routine on an island near Marseilles; later he traveled in the East, and on his return he visited Italy and contracted a friendship with Paulinus of Nola (q.v.). He then settled on the island of Lerinum (now Saint-Honorat). The number of his companions soon increased, and, though great freedom prevailed in the manner of life, Honoratus continued general superior. Johannes Cassianus (q.v.), founder of the slightly younger monastic community at Marseilles, dedicates to him a portion of his Collationes patrwn, and styles him president of the great cloister of brethren. As presbyter, Honoratiss also discharged the spiritual functions.
It is doubtful what cloistral rule was in force on Lerinum before the introduction of the Benedictine rule about 661. Arnold has demonstrated that the founder composed no rule, but that the order of living which he had established after Egyptian precedents was transmitted by tradition. The spiritual exercises included fasting, singing of
hymns, and prayer at appointed hours. The monks also tilled the soil and attended to the education of youth. It is probable that the monastic studies consisted mainly in the introduction of auxiliarymeans for the understanding of the Bible.
The foundation of Honoratus quickly attained great renown, becoming the hearth of rejuvenation for the secularized Gallic Church and filling the bishops with a more earnest ascetic spirit. The island of Lerinum came to be the nursery of the socalled Semipelagianism. Eucherius of Lyons, Vincentius, and Salvianus, spent some time as monks of Lerinum. Honoratus himself became bishop of Aries in 426, but died in 429. Maximus and Faustus of Riez were his able successors, the latter being one of the most eminent upholders of Semipelagianism. Csesarius of Aries spent considerable time at Lerinum under Abbot Porcerius. Amid the ravages of the sixth century (Provence fell into the hands of the Franks in 537) the discipline of the cloister declined. Abbot Marinus desired to introduce the milder Agaunensian rule; and under Abbot Stephen, who entertained St. Augustine of Canterbury on his way to the Anglo-Saxons, there set in a total decay of discipline. About 661 Aigulf, of the cloister of Fleury (Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire), reformed Lerinum according to the Benedictine rule; but the ardent Benedictine was assassinated by an opposing faction. By 690, however, Lerinum had again reached such a flourishing state that St. Amandus, then abbot, is said to have had under him 3,700 monks.
About 730 the wealthy cloister was plundered by the Saracens. It indicates a depressed state of affairs again, when in 964 the Burgundian King Conrad ceded Lerinum to the abbot of Mont-Majeur in behalf of the restoration of order. Soon afterward, however, Pope Benedict VII. made over Lerinum to Abbot Mayolus of Cluny. Afterward Odilo of Cluny appears as abbot of Lerinum, which he visited in 1022. Then followed local abbots; but with the union with the congregation of Cluny there began for Lerinum a new period of splendor. At all events, the wealth and influence of the monastery were still growing in the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century the monks were no longer disposed to be fratres, but desired to be domini, and at a general chapter in 1319 they resolved that it be left free to every monk, prior, and conventual, to acquire and administer property. Urban IV. and the popes of Avignon, John XXII. and Clement VI., bestowed the rich benefices in commendam. Attempts at reform, in connection with the efforts of Benedict XII., proved of little avail.
During the Great Schism the cloister stood on the side of the Roman obedience. After having again been consigned in the second half of the fifteenth century to commendatory abbots, the monastery entered upon a new period in 1515. To speed the cloister's reform, the incumbent at that time, Augustus of Grimaldi (later bishop of Grasse), imported some monks of Cluny and contrived the annexation of Lerinum to the Italian Benedictine congregation of St. Justina of Padua. After his death, however, Francis I. again bestowed the